I will be working for eZ systems, the Norwegian company behind the eZ publish CMS and CMF written in PHP. eZ will open a German office in January, this is why they hired me. My tasks are mainly to augment the community of eZ publish users in Germany, furthermore to serve customers in Southern Germany. The job profile comprises developers relations management, consulting, training, support, programming.

To get trained on eZ publish, I will be in Norway at the eZ headquarters in Skien until March for the 3.6 development cycle. I am very much looking forward to working closely with the team and to gain an intimate knowledge about the software. After the trainee period, I will work from my home office in Southern Germany.

There are several reasons why I feel very happy and confident with this job opportunity:

• eZ is a great company: I have already met some of the ez crew and they are all classy folks. They are not following any hype, they care about a good team spirit, a solid product. I have to admit, that eZ gained my full attention after they hired Derick. Hiring someone who is a highly skilled expert in a certain field, shows that the company is of good health, that there is no paranoia about individual insufficiency, that everyone’s able to learn from each other, and that useless politics play no role in technological discussions.
• eZ publish is a great piece of software: The CMS has been developed over years, the code quality is reasonably well and with the forthcoming 3.6. release, the CMS will be optimised for developers. eZ publish is a mature software and you can tell from the code, that the developers are highly skilled and motivated.
• eZ has a solid business model: Just like MySQL, eZ publish is dual licensed. This business model has proven to work out pretty well as the success of MySQL or Qt demonstrates, and the growth of eZ suggests. Of course, there are differences between MySQL’s and eZ’s products: A database server is a basic element of many Web applications, thus the market penetration is higher compared to a CMS which is a more specific product. On the other side, a CMS needs more customization, thus a CMS company like eZ gets more money from customers to extend their product. Another point is that the MySQL database has only one Open Source opponent (PostgreSQL), while there are many more Open Source CMS out there. Nevertheless, the high quality of eZ publish makes it one of the best Open Source CMS on the market.
• eZ is Open Source: I am advocating and programming Open Source for about 4 years now, and this special way of living, working, and business has become an important part of my personality – I would never want to miss it.

BTW: eZ is looking for personnel at their German office in Dortmund – no home office!